More of the Grift
P. T. Barnum would be proud.
So, the other day I noted that there were ivermectin advertisements in inserts of Trump rallies on one of the right-wing cable channels (see the image above).
In scrolling through Aaron Rupar’s Twitter feed of clips from Trump’s lastest rallies I noticed it again.
I was initially simply struck hat a symbol of the scam that was Trump’s governance (the idea that ivermectin was our savior from COVID and now, apparently, against contagions in general) alongside Trump asserting how his loss would damage the country. Basically, it is Opposite Day in a “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” kind of way.
But wait, there’s more!
This one is especially interesting:
It is worth noting the 1488 is a known pro-Nazi symbol. The ADL notes:
1488 is a combination of two popular white supremacist numeric symbols. The first symbol is 14, which is shorthand for the “14 Words” slogan: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” The second is 88, which stands for “Heil Hitler” (H being the 8th letter of the alphabet). Together, the numbers form a general endorsement of white supremacy and its beliefs.
Reports the Times of Israel: Trump ally says $14.88 sale price for pillows not intended as pro-Nazi symbolism.
So, here’s the deal. If someone points out that you might be using a pro-Nazi symbol and you then claim to not be doing do on purpose, you’d think you’d stop using it.
And, I would note, that I have received e-mail adverts from MyPillow and noticed the $14.88 price in the subject line. I noted it in passing as I spammed it, because as all red blooded Americans know, the normal “discount price” used $x.99. It is truly the American way! I thought I was an attention-grabbing number, having forgotten about 1488’s significance.
Then I saw some stories about it (like the the one linked above). I then noticed that the adverts were sayin 14.98.
Now, I don’t know for sure what is going on. Maybe someone who works for Lindell is Nazi sympathizer or maybe they are an Edge Lord who just thinks this kind of 4Chan nonsense is funny. Maybe Lindell knows full well what he’s doing. Or maybe it is all just a coincidence.
Here’s what I do know: once this was brought to their attention, they should have ceased. Instead, it looks like they are willing to play these games and that, at a minimum, they think the RSBN audience doesn’t care or, worse, might be attracted to the symbolism.
When people continually tell you who they are, believe them.
One thing is for certain about all of this: RSBN is clearly using a grift-based revenue model. Free programming from the Trump with scam adverts in the corner. It certainly tells you what they think of their audience.
I think there’s a Rule of Acquisition that states “the sheep want to be fleeced.”
This gets to the old question of why the Dems never produced a Trump-like figure. Republican gullibility relative to that of Dems was noticeable for years before Trump entered the political scene. Scam ads were a staple in GOP-aligned media for a long time. This was discussed at length by historian Rick Perlstein, and, in fairness, by one National Review writer (I can’t remember who at the moment). There were Fox advertisers who stated it openly when asked why they preferred to put their ads on Fox compared with other networks, and a great deal of right-wing commentary was often connected directly with get-rich-quick companies, as in Glenn Beck’s gold-hawking.
The supposed 1998 Trump quote about wanting to run as a Republican because they’re the dumbest voters around is an urban legend, but I don’t have any doubt that’s what he privately believes, and is the main reason he chose the GOP as his home.
Flooding the zone with shit, grabbing people’s attention.
@Kylopod:
Where he would find the sort of people who would produce the adulation he craves – rally crowds, Trump kitsch displays etc.
Is belief in Ivermectin* any different than belief in all those supplements sold in the supermarket?
*Belief in Ivermectin as an anti-Covid drug. It’s prescribed for other things, and not just “horse medicine”. My wife has had a prescription for years for a skin condition, and had a helluva time getting it during the crazy era.
@Kylopod:
Jared Kushner is supposed to have expressed the same sentiments.
@MarkedMan:
Yes, the anti-vax movement has a following (maybe even part of the origins) in the brain dead Marin County leftist community as well as the yoga studio crowd in California.
Can anyone say JFK Jr?
@MarkedMan:
A little.
Certain conditions require taking supplements regularly. the question is whether the unregulated stuff sold in the supermarket contains the stuff it claims to, and whether it will get absorbed as required.
Past that, most people don’t need supplements if they eat a varied diet. In such a case, supplements would be, as Sheldon Cooper put it, ingredients for expensive urine. But the only harm would be wasting money.
Relying on ivermectin instead of vaccination and actual treatments like Paxlovid or even antibody infusions, is actually risky for things like death or long term disability.
@MarkedMan: I tend to think there’s some level of randomness, and some trial-and-error, in the popularity of specific miracle cures. Frankly, I think the main reason invermectin became more successful than the earlier cure-all, hydroxychloroquine, is simply that the name is easier to remember and pronounce. Yes, it’s that dumb.
A lot of people have forgotten that Lindell in 2020 was briefly hawking oleander as a miracle Covid cure. The reason he stopped, and that it didn’t catch on more broadly in the quack community, is probably the same as why a lot of viruses become less deadly over time: they won’t have anyone to infect if the hosts are all dead.
@CSK:
Yes. I believe it was someone here, maybe you, who first brought it to my attention.
Fun bit of historical trivia. The quack doctor who was partly responsible for President Garfield’s death from a very survivable shot wound, literally had the first name Doctor. His full name and title was Dr. Doctor Willard Bliss.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Willard_Bliss
@Kathy:
I respectfully disagree. People buy supplements instead of seeking treatment for real life problems. For example, patients may avoid high blood pressure medication and instead take a “natural” supplement. We are so used to seeing supplements sold that we assume they can’t be a bad thing. But they can, and they are. At BEST they are a waste of money. But they can be much worse.
And, as you alluded above, they frequently contain significantly more or less of what they are labeled for, and as the NYTimes found out, may contain other, directly harmful things. As an example several of the supplements they tested were contaminated with gluten or nut oils.
@Kylopod: Just an aside, but as I mentioned above, my wife has had an ivermectin prescription for a skin condition for years. And I took chloroquine for two years while in the Peace Corps in Africa. Both of us have had Covid, my wife more than once. And Chloroquine can cause severe tachycardia in a small percentage of those taking it, up to and including fatal arrhythmia.
@MarkedMan: A couple of quick thoughts:
1. I am specifically referencing problems wit ivermectin as it pertains to COVID and as part of a “contagion emergency kit”–I fully allow it has a number of real and significant applications to humans as medication.
2. I would say that, as a general matter, many (most? all?) supplements are good example that it is not just a certain kind of conservative who can be gullible. It is a human frailty as a general matter.
Certainly the ads we all see at the bottom of some websites about “one weird trick” and promises of rock hard abs via doing practically nothing similarly illustrate the point.
@Kylopod: PArtisan self-congratulation is rather silly. Your partisan self-congrats would be better amended to “not yet” – as the snobbery of the professional class Democrats is rather poorly informed by history.
Pr Taylor was quite right in the past to highlight weak party apparatus / barrier to entry is the problem – that the opposition caught the virus first is an accident of history (whatever intellectualised snobbery as self-flattery might pretend, Mr Kennedy rather reflects populist woo-ism can easily go Leftwise)
The modern day GOP is run by people that learned their ABGs… Always Be Grifting.
Seriously, people? RSBN. That’s John Oliver level propaganda. Choose a whackjob sight and portray it broadly as Republican?
How about Raw Story. Mother Jones. HuffPost. Bulwark. MSNBC. All crazed left loons. The most bizarre of the bizarre.
I pity you people that this is what you have to resort to. Wow. Just wow.
@Kathy:
Rule of Acquisition #217: you can’t free a fish from water
@MarkedMan:
Well, yes. taking supplements instead of a prescribed treatment would be the same as taking ivermectin for the trump disease.
Taking supplements as supplements because one thinks it’s somehow “good,” might lead merely to wasting money.
@Jack: It’s good to hear you acknowledge that a network set up to exclusively stream all of Trump’s speeches is nothing but propaganda.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Understood. I’m just a little sensitive to when my wife had to tell doctors that she is taking ivermectin and she initially gets “that look”. At this point, an entirely rational reaction to finding out someone is taking it, but not always justified.
@Steven L. Taylor:
@Kathy:
That was my (obviously, poorly phrased) point to begin with. It’s easy to laugh at people taken in my the ivermectin/Covid nonsense, until you realize that the supermarkets give up huge amounts of valuable shelf space over to supplements, which pretty much guarantees it’s not just trumpers falling for them. Hell, I think Whole Foods has proportionately more supplement placement than Walmart.
@Lounsbury: “PArtisan self-congratulation is rather silly. Your partisan self-congrats would be better amended to “not yet” – as the snobbery of the professional class Democrats is rather poorly informed by history.”
That’s right, fools! All humans are too stupid not to fall for such a conman. Except for your infinite superior, the Great and Brilliant Lounsbury! All bow down before his majestic intelligence!
Remember, the only thing standing between him and total global domination is his inability to write a coherent sentence in English! But that’s only because language is too far beneath him…
@Kathy: I use supplements on the advice of my primary care physician (who monitors the levels of the effect the have on my blood work). My outlay for them amounts to about $25 for each 90 day supply. The Vitamin D3 and magnesium supplements appear to be working, but the iron supplement’s jury is still out. And you’re absolutely right about almost nobody knowing how either supplements or nutrients from a balanced diet get absorbed on any level beyond extremely rudimentary ones.
Just call me one of the mindless buffoons, I guess. Overall though, my urine is still pretty inexpensive. Roughly 20¢/day more than yours.
@Kylopod: Doctor Doctor? Maybe Garfield would’ve had a better outcome if he had just been burning, burning!
@just nutha:
I’ve no idea how supplements and nutrients are absorbed, beyond a rudimentary one
@Jack: I didn’t mention Republicans in my post, I would note.
Still, who is it you think watches RSBN? Fabian socialists? Adherents to the Green Party?
@MarkedMan: Last time I checked, the efficacy rate for HBT treatment using conventional medicines was about 35%. Has that number risen recently? I don’t keep track anymore because I’m still trying to convince my doctor that the reason my blood pressure goes up seasonally is because asthma and the medications used to treat it raise one’s BP.
I had that conversation when I met my new PCP in June:
Is your blood pressure usually this high?
Yes, at this time of year. It always goes up in asthma season.
[Listens to breathing] Hmmm… Your lungs sound clear…
Yes, that’s because I’ve been taking 3 or 4 different medications several times a day for 3 or 4 weeks now.
Hmmm…
ETA: Wash, rinse, repeat for each new PCP
@Kathy: Me neither. That’s why I keep taking my doctor’s word on the needing supplements thing. I take some comfort about the brand I’m buying at the grocery store being the same one the Kaiser MC pharmacy sells, too.
@Jack:
The Bulwark is run by “crazed left loons”? Coulda fooled me.
I had Covid in June. I talked to my cardiologist on the phone. She asked me about symptoms, trying to suss out how severe I was experiencing it. It turns out, not too bad. She declined to put me on ivermectin, because I would have had to go off my statin. But she said that if it got worse, she would put me on it.
So, it’s not a quack medicine, but probably should be administered by a doctor. And not bought in “kits” over the internet. Do you know where that’s been?
@Kylopod:
Because the Democratic Party is a genuinely heterogenous, multicultural, big tent party. At a national level, Democrats must balance the interests of groups from very varied walks of life. This imperative is itself a moderating force, and means Democrats cannot just cater its own gullibles, morons, and dogmatic ideologues.
The Republican Party has become increasingly homogenous and lacking in diversity. It’s therefore easier for any one extreme to gain outsized power, and it doesn’t help matters when fundamentalist religiosity and lack of education feature prominently in the party’s homogeneity. Or that the Senate and the Electoral College often allow Republicans to escape punishment for elevating its nuts.
The GQP could benefit greatly from DEI, but too many conservatives are too ignorant to see why. The only cure I see is continual election losses. Republicans may hate gays, women, college grads, and PoC, but I’m guessing they’d hate repeatedly losing even more.
@Jack:..bizarre.
@Jay L Gischer:
You may want to consider a different cardiologist. All I’ve read on the subject indicates ivermectin has no significant effect on recovery time, odds of hospitalization, or anything else regarding the trump disease.
Sometime doctors with real training and experience fall for fads and misinformation, too.
@DK:
Yep. We are, paradoxically perhaps, more likely to be immune to fascism because, structurally, we are a whole unruly choir singing from songbooks that are only partly aligned.
I wouldn’t want to make too much of it, but unruly alliances have in the past outperformed more rigidly discipline groups. The Allies vs. the Axis, NATO vs. the Warsaw Pact.
@Jack:
Back up even a single thing you wrote.
@Kylopod:
Giving your kid the first name “Doctor” is some real sneaky s&#t. Have to hand it to them on this one.
I read once someplace the George Washington likely succumbed due to some over-zealous docs of his time. They thought bleeding was the miracle cure, and George being who he was, they did it so many times he probably was weakened to the point were the flu took him out.
@dazedandconfused: But for those quack doctors, Washington would still be with us today!
If you can get Nazis to part with money by selling things for $14.88, that means less money for them to do Nazi shit with.
Alas, I suspect that many of these grifters are Nazis themselves, so it’s just concentrating Nazi funds.
I’d like the ADL or someone to secretly set up some companies to grift that money out of the Nazi community. And then let their customer list get hacked. “Hacked” as it were.
“Genuine Donald Trump inspired body pillow, was $17.76, but get it now for $14.88 — 15% off!” — has a ring to it, no?
@Kathy: OR, it could be that she doesn’t quite trust that I will take her word for it. The situation she is navigating goes between “I am here for you”, and “you probably don’t need any medical intervention”. That’s a tricky spot for a doctor, since many, many people equate interventions with somebody caring.
@Kylopod: Dr. Doctor William Bliss also treated Zachary Taylor for Malaria in 1844, a few years before his death in office.
I really want that death to be linked to botched malaria treatments.
No information as to whether he treated Lincoln for a headache at Ford Theater.
@just nutha:
Someone with a diagnosed deficiency treating it with supplements under a doctors care seems pretty sensible to me. And if you can get OTC supplements that are working that saves a lot in comparison to the prescription ones that Pharma companies make.
@Jay L Gischer:
Ivermectin is an antiviral but it has demonstrated no efficacy against Covid-19 in serious clinical trials and there have been too many, as the resources would have been better spent on other things. Here’s one, from a n=1400, double blind study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2022. At this point, if my doctor was seriously talking about ivermectin as a cure for Covid-19 I would find a new doctor. But that’s just me.
@Jay L Gischer:
There’s a medical intervention, Paxlovid. It does indicate a window of about 5 days from a positive test or onset of symptoms. Past that, apparently it may not be as effective.
But by far the best intervention is to get vaccinated and take the anual booster as well.
@Jay L Gischer: I wonder if your doctor thought you were a Republican, and that she should head off you demanding Ivermectin by saying it wasn’t for your level of illness. (What level of illness is it good for? Whatever level you don’t have.)
If so, you have my sympathies. People sometimes mistake me for a Republican, and it’s terrible.
@Kylopod:
At least once in the past, they did. George Wallace ran the first time as a Dem, but could make no headway with party leaders, who still had a lot of say in who got the nomination. It’s one of the reasons I think Bernie’s successful crusade to eliminate the Super Delegates is potentially disastrous. Every party should have a “break glass in case of fire” tool in their back pocket.
I think one of the things that stops today’s Democratic party from going off the deep end is how many people have been driven into it because of GOP insanity. They want nothing to do with that nonsense and provide a brake on going too far.
@Jack:
Meanwhile, a 78-year-old grandpa done up in fake orange tan while screaming “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT” on socials is what passes for not bizarre on the right. And this totally ordinary stuff:
That you fringe right MAGA weirdos really think you’re the arbiters of normalcy is why rapist felon Trump lost in 2020, and why his clown car party has been losing ever since — shedding suburban woman, educated whites, and a notable number of Reagan/Bush Republicans. Modern rightwingers are blind to how out-of-touch, unlikeable, and off the rails they are. Y’all will remain blinded, because arrogant + stupid has no fix. So keep on doing exactly what you’re doing, boo. Democratic campaign staff everywhere thank you. LOL
The difference is that Biden and Harris haven’t themselves promoted quackery products. The reason this grifting works so well on the stupid people is because their cult leader has promoted hydroxychloroquine and other unproven remedies.
@Kylopod:
Part of the problem is to determine how we want to define “a Trump-like” figure. Does Wallace (noted above) count? How about Huey Long? Maybe even Andrew Jackson?
If we define it more narrowly, even the Republicans haven’t produced a Trump until now, which means we are dealing with a fairly unique situation.
I would note, as I have before, that populists can cleave to the right and to the left if we are talking across time and place.
We do seem to find ourself in a historical moment of right-wing, reactionary nationalism in ascendence, with Trump being the US manifestation.
In terms of recent history, Trump seems to fit quite with Silvio Berlusconi as a comparison. He could fit in with a basket that includes Boris Johnson and Jair Bolsonaro, although not identically.
These are all figures of the right, to be sure.
I would put someone like JD Vance more in the Viktor Orban category.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Oh, I think absolutely Old Hickory — but his party had no more to do with the current Democratic Party than Abe Lincoln had to do with the current GOP.
@Jack:
And yet not hawking precious metals, crypto, or quack cures. Funny, that. And kind of the point… which, as usual, you missed completely. Or, I suppose, to be charitable, you are merely desperately deflecting from.
@Steven L. Taylor:
That’s an excellent question, and even though I (unwisely) used the term, it’s a term I’ve tended to despise. (Doing a quick search on Google, I found the phrase “Democratic Trump” applied to everyone from Bernie Sanders to Michael Avenatti to Jamaal Bowman.) The basic problem is that Trump is such a unique blend of awful, he can’t really be boiled down to any one trait. It’s like the blind man and the elephant, everyone defining him by honing in on just one attribute without seeing the whole. Is it his being a racist demagogue? A businessman with no prior political experience? A corrupt goon and con artist? A serial sex offender? Or is it his cartoonish narcissism? The bizarrely childish way he speaks? His record-breaking number of lies? His word salad on policy? His rallies where he talks about Hannibal Lecter and sharks in semi-extemporaneous rants that some have compared to improv comedy, even though the idea that he’s engaging in anything that can be reasonably described as humor puts me in mind of the Emperor’s New Clothes? It’s yet another version of sanewashing that could be called jokewashing.
In this thread I was mainly addressing the issue of Republican gullibility, which makes them susceptible to a Nigerian Prince-tier con artist, something Trump happens to be though it’s hardly the only thing he happens to be. And yes, it does have some roots in the populism of Huey Long and George Wallace–and possibly Andrew Jackson as well. What a lot of it boils down to is an attempt to appeal to people’s narcissism by convincing them it’s independent thinking, when in reality it’s feelings over fact–a rejection of authority not based on healthy skepticism but on resisting whatever doesn’t comport with their preexisting beliefs. That’s how you get people insisting they’re “just asking questions” and “doing their own research” who then go on to credulously accept every huckster in town.
@DrDaveT:
I don’t disagree. But that just speaks to the definitional issues I was suggesting above.
@Kylopod:
Given that that scam apparently is quite old, I suspect that research has been done to profile what types of people are most susceptible.
I am open to the hypothesis that certain ideologies correlate to being susceptible to certain kinds of scams and con artists. I just always find assertions that Dems wouldn’t fall for their version of Trump to be more statements of partisanship than social science.
And, of course, part of the issue is defining a host of terms first.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Part of the problem is to determine how we want to define “a Trump-like” figure. Does Wallace (noted above) count? How about Huey Long? Maybe even Andrew Jackson?
Perot. He’s an outsider, a crank, and a rich guy who has no interest in any type of politics. He sucks at building and guiding organizations which are not based on money and that’s a huge part of his appeal.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I just always find assertions that Dems wouldn’t fall for their version of Trump to be more statements of partisanship than social science.
Tech is a highly educated and very liberal place filled with rich egomaniacs. If any place would produce a Democratic counter to Trump it’s going to be tech. And yet all of the Trumps in tech from Musk down to the extremely sad VC guys who are posting vote fraud end up in the same MAGA place.
There’s just a pattern of lame personality type and Republican/conservative/libertarian which connects to MAGA and Trump, and it’s not replicated anywhere else.
Just added: Eric Adams is definitely a Trump for Democrats. He believes crank things and everything he stands for is self-enrichment, and because he’s a cop it’s okay. He was also indicted by the Deep State.
@Modulo Myself: I have long contended that if Perot had run for the Dem nomination in 1992 instead of going the independent route, he probably would have won the White House (he certainly would have come closer).
Of course that example, along with Adams, all raise the question of exactly what qualifies as a. “Trump-like figure.” And hence my point about definitions.
Also: what is the time-frame?
@Scott:
I can say it, but … it would be wrong.
You meant RFK Jr, right?
Fun Fact: I grew up in Marin County.
@al Ameda: Yep, I means RFK, Jr. My bad.